Fruits and Seeds. 1 97 



heat of the animal's body. It may be said that 

 the skin of apple and pear pips is comparatively 

 soft ; but then they are embedded in a stringy core, 

 which is seldom eaten. 



These coloured fruits form a considerable part of 

 the food of monkeys in the tropical regions of the 

 earth, and we can, I think, hardly doubt that these 

 animals are guided by the colours, just as we are, 

 in selecting the ripe fruit. 



10. In these instances of coloured fruits, the fleshy 

 edible part more or less surrounds the true seeds ; 

 in others the actual seeds themselves become edible. 

 In the former the edible part serves as a temptation 

 to animals ; in the latter it is stored up for the use 

 of the plant itself. When, therefore, the seeds 

 themselves are edible they are generally protected 

 by more or less hard or bitter envelopes, for 

 instance the Horse Chestnut, Beech, Spanish 

 Chestnut, Walnut, &c. That these seeds are used 

 as food by squirrels and other animals is, however, 

 by no means necessarily an evil to the plant, for the 

 result is that they are often carried some distance 

 and then dropped, or stored up and forgotten, so 

 that, by this means, they get carried away from the 

 parent tree. 



11. In another class of instances, animals, uncon- 

 sciously or unwillingly, serve in the dispersion of 

 seeds. These cases may be divided into two 

 classes, those in which the fruits are provided with 

 hooks, and those in which they are sticky. To the 



